Nexign, a Business Support System and Internet of Things platform provider, announced new capabilities to its product portfolio that will empower communications service providers to build digital partnerships and collaborate more efficiently. This will enable CSPs to create new business models, accelerate time-to-market for new advanced products and services and reduce total cost of ownership by up to 25%, while improving the user experience. As a result, end-users will benefit from personalisation, optimisation and expanded service offerings from CSPs.

Facing disruptive changes in classic roaming and SIM distribution model due to eSIM, Nexign has entered in to an exclusive partnership with Bubbletone. The two companies have developed a joint solution—a blockchain-based marketplace for DSPs with a BSS connectivity kit―that provides operators the opportunity to create new roaming products and complex bundles, including digital non-telco services, that can be offered in a personalised manner to roaming subscribers. The two companies aim to create a global marketplace for telecom operators, giving them the ability to collaborate with each other and consequently offer individually determined volumes and qualities of services to end users—an option that has not previously existed.

“I believe that this is Nexign’s competitive advantage. If regional operators are to make the transition from CSPs to digital service providers, it is imperative that they align with a BSS vendor that addresses key themes such as cloud, partnerships, customer experience, digital channels, self-care and new monetisation streams for 5G, blockchain and IoT. At the same time, the BSS vendor needs to be agile, adopt best practices for product development and delivery and offer a transparent, partnership-based engagement model,” said Ahmad Sayed, Regional Head and VP Sales, Middle East and Africa, Nexign.

By facilitating seamless and secure exchange of financial and identity information between mobile network operators, phone users and service providers, the solution will enable roaming users to instantly purchase service packages, at local operator rates, using their existing SIM card. As a consequence, operators will benefit from BSS with embedded blockchain, enabling them to increase the efficiency of their business through rapid and seamless joining of the Bubbletone platform.

Once operators join the platform, they will be able to expand their customer bases and increase revenue, without any additional costs, through distribution of digital value-added services. According to Research and Markets, blockchain in the telecom market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 84.4% between 2018-2023, driven in large part by increasing support for OSS BSS processes.

(Left to right) Yuri Morozov, CEO and Founder of Bubbletone Blockchain for Telecom; and Loukas Tzitzis, Chief Products and Marketing Officer at Nexign.

“The idea behind this project is to attract as many mobile operators as possible to the Bubbletone ecosystem and show them how easily they can take full advantage of blockchain technology and get direct access to the international telecom market in the digital economy era,” said Yuri Morozov, CEO and Founder of Bubbletone Blockchain for Telecom.

“The growing demand from subscribers for more varied and personalised offerings, coupled with the increasing importance of the B2B2X business model, requires operators to diversify their revenue streams by unlocking the opportunities offered by IoT, 5G and blockchain. At the same time, the pressure to reduce TCO is driving operators to embrace cloud and virtualization”, said Loukas Tzitzis, Chief Products and Marketing Officer at Nexign.

“This is not possible without efficient collaboration. With the new capabilities of the Nexign product portfolio, CSPs will be able to seamlessly and efficiently build global partnerships and capitalise on the many benefits of an open ecosystem including business agility, accelerated integration, increased value and TCO optimisation,” adds Tzitzis.

Commenting on the importance of collaboration in the telecoms sector, John Abraham, Principal Analyst at Analysys Mason said, “Ecosystems are at the heart of what makes a digital service provider truly successful. To this end, in order to enable a value-driven ecosystem around its core offerings, operators must have the platforms in place that can not only seamlessly onboard new partners and enable them to offer their services, but also offers true value to partners that choose to be part of the operator ecosystem. This makes partnerships and ecosystems absolutely critical for operators.”

The blockchain-based BSS solution from Nexign and Bubbletone has the potential to revolutionise the way operators do business and monetise services, for three key reasons:

The platform creates a global marketplace where operators can publish and share product information as well as buy and resell.

With full support for e-SIM and IoT Apps tokens operators can now publish their own tokens and sequences.

The blockchain network acts as a clearing house, checking all transactions and mitigating any settlement risks.